I have a suggestion for a new HTML tag. My unresearched suggestion is to make it the REF tag, and it could work something like this: <ref href="http://www.example.com/">>Some text</ref>. p>
The behaviour of a REF tag should very closely mimic the behaviour of the A tag, in that it creates a clickable link. The semantics, however, are different. It should be taken to mean that the current page is referring to the page referenced, http://www.example.com/ in the example given. To a reader (bot or human), it should be interpreted as "the current page is a reference to the information on the URL given, as an answer, corroboration, disputing the information, or in other ways responding to the information given at URL". p>
This could be used by the author of a page to indicate that she is giving a specific reply to another page. If I were to comment on an article published online by CNN or The BBC, I would add a REF tag to my page, and search engines and other services could display this is a comment. A browser plugin, for example, could use such a service to show a reader of the original page a synopsis of my article, thereby giving anyone the possibility to reply to any article published online by anyone, on their own page, and still let it be discoverable. p>
It is possible that only one REF tag should be accepted per page. Perhaps it should be allowed only in the <HEAD> of a document? I'll leave that to more well informed people to decide.
posted at: 15:44 | path: /2009/06/07 | permanent link to this entry